


Left In The Dark Pondering Our Mistakes

by emmiebee



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arguing, Brian Is A Space Heater Rights, Emotional Hurt, Forehead Kisses, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, In a way, One Really Bad Joke Is Made, Relationship Problems, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Soft Jonny d'Ville, Sort Of, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unresolved Tension, also brian can be a little bitchy because i said so, an attempt to convert everyone to the headcanon that tim and lyf are bffs, be warned, but mostly it's angst, he tries to through himself out of an airlock, how many brian headcanons can i fit into one inner monologue challenge, i'm so bad at tagging for triggers i'm sorry, it's about them fighting and hurting each other so, jonny d'ville has all the feelings, mostly implied and referenced, technically hearteyes is a thing in this but like, they're all so bad at feelings, tim's an idiot and doesn't know how to not hurt himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmiebee/pseuds/emmiebee
Summary: When you love someone, it’s inevitable that you will hurt them, and that they will hurt you. There will be words said that can’t be unsaid, actions that can’t be undone. You will tear each other apart and put each other back together again so many times that you can’t remember how you were when you first started. When you’re immortal, this becomes truer still.AKA Jonny and Tim have a fight, it gets really bad and the others are there to pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & Jonny d'Ville, Jonny d'Ville/Gunpowder Tim, Lyfrassir Edda & Gunpowder Tim, background Lyfrassir Edda/Marius Von Raum
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	1. The Universe Is Infinite And Full of Idiots

**Author's Note:**

> "No we're not in a right state of mind  
> We all wish for the strength to admit it  
> Our stubbornness will put up a fight  
> But we don't deserve to win it  
> We're left in the dark pondering our mistakes  
> In the light I swear we will  
> Deny it all"  
> \- Liar, the Arcadian Wild (aka the song i was blasting on repeat while writing this and also where the title's from)

When you love someone, it’s inevitable that you will hurt them, and that they will hurt you. There will be words said that can’t be unsaid, actions that can’t be undone. You will tear each other apart and put each other back together again so many times that you can’t remember how you were when you first started. When you’re immortal, this becomes truer still.

There have been too many times to count when the Mechanisms have hurt each other, with words or in other ways. When they tear each other apart physically, it’s a simple cleanup; just retrieve the body, make sure all the parts are in one place, and wait for them to regenerate. But when they tear each apart  _ emotionally?  _ The pieces still have to be picked up, though in a slightly different way. And  _ none  _ of them know how to do that, no matter how often they pretend they do. So the job often falls to Brian, who has all of the crews coping mechanisms and preferred methods of comfort compiled and catalogued in his mind, and who is able to run scenarios in his head to determine what the best course of action is for any particular situation. 

Brian is fine with this, of course, he loves his crew and would quite literally do anything for them, but it does sometimes get tiring (Brian doesn’t get tired, but that’s the closest word he can think of to what it’s like), trying to work through new solutions to problems he’s faced a thousand times before. Especially when it’s Jonny.

Jonny’s mood can change in the blink of an eye, and alongside it the proper way to interact with him at any given time. Sometimes he needs you to fight him, sometimes he needs to hold him, sometimes he needs you to leave him alone so he can fight himself until he breaks. It’s impossible to tell which one it is until someone tries to go to him, and discovers the answer.

The problem with this is that most of the crew have their own very specific love language, their own way to comfort and be comforted. Tim’s is guns, Marius’ is music, Ashes’ is booze and fire, Ivy’s is books, Raphaella’s is science experiments, TS’s is tea and company, Nastya’s and Lyf’s are sitting together in comfortable silence with someone you love, and Brian’s? Brian’s is all of the above, depending on who he’s comforting and where his morality switch is at. That’s why he’s the go-to for when Jonny needs someone, and Tim isn’t available. 

This particular instance wasn’t anything special, just another example of two people being so very human and hurting someone they love. 

Brian had no idea anything was wrong until he went looking for Tim to see if the gunner could help him sew something for Rosie. The tiny red octokitten was growing depressed as her flower collection kept dying, so Brian was wondering if he could make her some out of fabric, so they would never die and she could nest in them forever. On his way to Tim’s sewing room he passed through the bridge, where Marius, Lyf, and Ashes were deep in a card game. As he made his way past them in the direction of the sewing room, Lyf called, “Oh, I wouldn’t go back there if I were you.”

Brian paused. “Why not?”

“Jonny and Tim have been going at it. All. Day.” Ashes explained in an annoyed tone, and Brian’s brain quickly ran through every definition of the term ‘going at it’, trying to calculate which one was most likely in this situation.

“They’re arguing,” Marius added helpfully, and Brian gave a small nod of thanks. He dialed up his hearing and sure enough could hear the muffled sound of raised voices from a little ways away. He quickly made the decision to leave them alone until everything was resolved and turned to the players. “Mind if I join?”

Lyf scooted over to make room for him, which they really didn’t need to do but it gave them an excuse to be closer to Marius, and Ashes dealt him in. 

They played in comfortable companionship for a while (well, as comfortable and companionable as the Mechs can get, with lots of death threats and blatant cheating and an unusual amount of fire), until a furious howl echoed from the direction of the first mate and the gunner, followed by a slamming door. A moment later, Tim came storming onto the bridge. He looked…  _ angry  _ didn’t quite cover it.  _ Furious  _ was closer, but still not there. His eyes were sparking (literally, his mechanism was sparking), and there were gashes across his brow that looked suspiciously like fingernails. He didn’t look at any of them as he passed, just stalked out into the corridor, and a minute later the gunshots started. 

“Oh, this doesn’t look good,” Marius frowned after Tim, concern clearly etched across his features. 

“Emotional Support Emergency?” Lyf asked, tensing. Ashes held up a hand, signaling the group to pause and be silent for a second. It didn’t take long for Brian to figure out what they were listening for, and a faint twinge of fear flickered through his heart as he realized that, while there were gunshots and thumps coming from Tim’s direction, there was nothing coming from Jonny. This either meant that Tim had killed him as part of their argument, or…

“Emotional Support Emergency,” Ashes declared, and the four of them were on their feet in a second, prepared to improvise a game plan. 

“I’ll get Tim,” Lyf offered, and Ashes nodded. “Good idea. I would go with you, but I don’t think fire and booze is what he needs right now.”

“You need backup?” Marius asked Lyf. “I make a great human shield.”

Lyf shot him a fond look, but Ashes shook their head. “No, Mare, we need you here in case any of them try to run and come this way. You can be the in between. Besides, Lyf is capable of standing there quietly until Tim decides to talk to them, and since that’s the best strategy we’ve got, I don’t want anything compromising that.”

“I can be quiet!” Marius insisted, and was met by three skeptical pairs of eyes. Before he could protest any further, however, Aurora projected a warning onto the wall opposite the group:  _ I thought you might want to know that Gunpowder Tim is attempting to access the airlock.  _

“Oh no the fuck he is  _ not,”  _ Lyf snarled, marching out of the bridge and after Tim like a righteous rainbow warrior. 

“I’ll come collect your corpse when he shoots you!” Marius calls after them. 

“That’s true love, right there,” Ashes snorted, earning a grin from Marius before back to business it was. 

“So. Who wants to handle Jonny?” All eyes turned to Brian. He knew this was coming, and had already made the decision without anyone having to ask. “I’ve got him,” he said. Ashes insisted on coming with him to ‘guard the door’, and they set off to commence damage control on the first mate. 

On the way, Brian’s mind began cycling through the possible outcomes of this venture, displaying statistics and likelihoods and percentages directly onto the tiny screens in his eyes. It did this for everything he ever did, calculating outcomes and their likelihoods based on previous experiences with similar situations and prior knowledge, showing him every way he could mess things up and make it worse. Rarely did it show him the possibilities of him  _ not  _ fucking up. Because it wasn’t enough that the doc gave him a morality switch, a space heater, a storage compartment in his left thigh, a flashlight in his mouth, knives in his fingers, and extensive knowledge of every possible way he and the others could be taken apart and put back together, she just  _ had  _ to give him anxiety, too. 

Brian doesn’t hate her for it, he doesn’t think, but it can be irritating. However, at the moment Brian was on EJM, and the end he was trying to reach was Helping Jonny, so he would do absolutely whatever it took to get that done, programmed anxiety be damned. 

They found Jonny in Tim’s sewing room, sitting on the floor in one corner of the room and curled into himself so tightly that it looked like he might snap in half. He was shaking, his entire body trembling as though an earthquake was ripping its way through him on the inside. Ugly, broken, sobs escaped from where his face was buried in his knees. Jonny rarely cried, and when he did it was almost  _ never  _ like this. This was bad. This was real bad. 

There didn’t seem to be any blood on him, which was a good sign, as it meant he hadn’t tried to claw his heart out or anything else along those lines yet. What wasn’t a good sign was that the reason he hadn’t was probably because his hands were shaking too much. 

“Jonny,” Brian knelt in front of the first mate and placed a metal hand on his knee. There was no response but a shuddering, keening cry that echoed through Brian in every place he could still feel. This was bad this was  _ so  _ bad what did he do how did he do this what was he doing-

_ No.  _ Brian jerked back into focus, once again bringing his very human heart into balance with his very mechanical mind. He could not afford to lose himself here. He dialed down his emotional receptors just a bit, as he didn’t want to entirely  _ not  _ feel, he just wanted to keep himself from panicking too much to help. 

“Jonny,” he said again, softening his voice and inching a bit closer. “Jonny, can you hear me? It’s Brian.”

“Drumbot,” Jonny’s voice was barely audible, and about as shaky as the rest of him. 

Brian smiled gently, giving the first mate’s knee a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah, it’s me. Drumbot’s here. Ashes too, they’re right outside the door. We’re here for you.”

Jonny said something else, but it was impossible to hear through the tears and the trembling and the choking sobs. Brian, knowing that Jonny needed to be touched when he was like this but not quite sure just how much yet, squeezed his knee again and then began rubbing slow circles over it, hoping that that would do something. 

“Sweetheart,” he tried again, remembering that Jonny also reacted strongly to pet names, and desperate to do anything that would stop the shaking. “Sweetheart, could you maybe take a deep breath for me? Can you do that? I just need you to breathe, okay? Breathe for me.”

Jonny made a couple halting attempts to inhale, then shook his head violently and let out a quiet wail. 

“Is it your heart? Is it acting up?” 

Jonny shook his head again. Brian considered. “Okay, alright, that’s fine, just keep trying. I just want want you to remember to breathe, love. Remember to breathe.”

Jonny tried for a nod, his face still buried in his arms. It took a couple minutes, but he finally managed to take a deep, shuddering breath. And another. And then another. The shaking subsided a bit as he kept breathing in and out, and Brian relaxed a little. They were making progress. Now he just needed to figure out where to go from there. 

After about ten minutes of deep breathing, Jonny lifted his head just a little to peer out at Brian. He looked awful. His eyeliner had completely washed away, and his eyes were so red and puffy they looked infected. Tim had clearly done a number on him. He tried to say something, but all the crying had rendered his voice so hoarse that nothing came out. 

“Shhh,” Brian reached out and brushed his hair out of his face, leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. Jonny required a lot of physical comfort, and while Brian wasn’t entirely sure how to give that, he always tried his best. “You don’t have to talk, not just yet. You can just nod or shake your head or indicate what you need in some other way for now.”

Jonny nodded, then promptly crawled into Brian’s lap and practically dissolved into his chest.  _ Well, he  _ **_is_ ** _ indicating what he needs,  _ Brian thought drily, before wrapping his arms around the first mate and switching on his internal space heater. He turned the heat up as high as it could go, which was something he only did when necessary as it tended to overheat him and slow down his inner workings. But that didn’t particularly matter right now. 

They stayed just like that for a while, Jonny curled into Brian, Brian rubbing soothing circles onto his back and rocking gently back and forth. Eventually Jonny pulled away and went back to his spot in the corner, slumping against the wall and curling back into a ball, wrapping his arms around his knees and propping his chin on them. He stared sullenly at nothing in particular for a moment, and then asked “Did you hear any of it?”

Brian shifted until he was sitting cross-legged in front of Jonny and shook his head. “No. I didn’t hear anything, but you were just shaking so hard you couldn’t breathe and Tim is apparently trying to throw himself out of an airlock, so I can gather that it was bad.”

Jonny nodded absently, eyes wandering and fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Brian recognized the familiar restlessness and quickly located a piece of scrap fabric, which he gathered and handed to Jonny to fiddle with as he talked. Jonny took it without a word and promptly began twisting it around his fingers. “It was bad,” he confirmed. 

“How did it start?” Brian wondered, hoping he wasn’t pushing too hard. 

“I don’t remember,” Jonny admitted, and then barked out a brokenhearted laugh. “Isn’t that fucked up? I don’t even remember. We were just- we were bickering, y’know? Like we always do. About something stupid, it’s always something stupid. And then Tim got upset, because…” he trailed off, frowning. “Tim got upset… he was… he said… Fuck, he...” Jonny flinched, then said, “He couldn’t remember what color Bertie’s eyes were.”

“Oh.” Brian could see how that would be a big deal for Tim. He didn’t fully  _ understand  _ it, as he himself couldn’t even remember what his own eye color had been and didn’t feel any particular need to, but he could see why it would matter to Tim. 

Jonny nodded again, distractedly. “He couldn’t remember what color they were, and he started freaking out, so I tried to calm him down, but there really wasn’t much I could do, cuz I don’t remember either… So I did what I always do and said something stupid about how maybe that was a  _ good  _ thing, and he kind of lost it.”

At this point Jonny began tearing the fabric scrap in his hands into smaller and smaller pieces. He was clearly getting agitated, and Brian was about to say something about how he didn’t have to keep going if he didn’t want to, but then Jonny set his jaw and continued. 

“We started yelling at each other. I can’t really… It’s sort of a blur. We both… said a lot of things, we kind went around in circles. I know that when he first got angry it reminded me of when he first got mechanized, when I… y’know. That’s what set me off, I think. I don’t exactly remember how we go there, but at one point I told him that I sometimes wished he would just leave, how that would fix everything with us, and then he said maybe he would, and then  _ I  _ said that he definitely should, and- and that I wouldn’t miss him even a little-”

“Oh, Jonny.” Brian sighed, but Jonny wasn’t finished. “He called me a heartless bastard.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.  _ Fuck.  _ “He  _ didn’t.”  _

“He did,” Jonny sounded like he was about to start trembling and screaming again, and Brian decided that as soon as he was done in here, he was going to go toss Tim out of that airlock himself. The gunner  _ knew  _ how sensitive Jonny was about that word and others like it, he knew it better than any of them, and he made a point to  _ never  _ use it himself. If he had… there might be no coming back from this.  _ “Why?” _

Jonny squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the fabric in his hand like a lifeline. “When I said the thing about him leaving, he started doing that  _ thing-  _ you know the thing he does, the blinking thing, where he’s trying to cry but he  _ can’t  _ he  _ knows  _ he can’t and he  _ does it anyway-  _ and I started mocking him for it. I just- I was so  _ angry  _ at him and seeing him do that always breaks my heart and I just- I started laughing, telling him to go on, cry at me, see if that makes him feel better, ‘come on Tim why don’t you just have a good cry’- that sort of thing. And then he said it. And I screamed at him to get out, so he did. And that was it.”

At that, Brian quickly amended his earlier decision and made up his mind to throw the  _ both  _ of them out of the airlock and just hope they ended up as far away from each other as possible.  _ Why is my family so stupid and why do I love them so much?? _

“What do I do, Bri?” Jonny whispered, sounding so lost that Brian wanted to scream at the universe for doing this to him, for doing this to Tim, for doing this to any of them, but that wouldn’t help anyone he had to help that’s what he was  _ here for- Okay, okay. Focus, Drumbot. You’re no good to anyone when you’re like this. You can panic later. This is about Jonny right now. He’s all that matters.  _

“Do you want to kill me?” Brian asked, utterly sincere. Sometimes violence was the only thing that could clear Jonny’s mind.

Jonny shook his head. 

“Do you want me to kill you?”

Jonny started to nod, then shook his head again, fiercely this time. “No. No, that won’t help, it never helps. It won’t make anything go away.”

_ Finally figured that out, did you?  _ Brian thought, centuries of frustration at Jonny’s ridiculously unhealthy coping mechanisms jumping to the surface. He quickly shoved the thought back before it could creep out of his mouth. “Alright then. What do you want to do?”

“I want it to  _ not hurt,”  _ Jonny snarled, then froze, his eyes going wide as they welled with tears. “Shit, Brian, I didn’t mean to- It just hurts so much and I hate it and I don’t understand  _ why-  _ I thought Tim and I were past all this. I thought we- I thought he- I thought he-” 

He couldn’t seem to get the words out.  _ I thought he loved me.  _

“He does,” Brian promised. “Believe me, he does. He really does.”

“Then why did he break my fucking heart?” Jonny demanded, broken and confused and looking so very, very human that Brian almost felt a pang of envy. 

He didn’t quite know how to answer that, if he was being honest. “Because…” his mind was cycling through words and explanations that he could give, but none of them felt right. They were too logical, too scientific, too wordy, too… inhuman. 

“Because the universe is infinite and full of idiots,” Brian said eventually. Jonny just stared at him for a moment, then frowned. “Are you calling me an idiot?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Brian told him. “You’re an idiot, Tim’s an idiot, I’m an idiot, everyone on this ship is an idiot, and I love you all despite that.”

Jonny snorted, wiping his eyes. “Damn right.”

Brian grinned. And Jonny grinned back, just for a moment, before he faltered. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

“And that’s alright,” Brian reassured him. “You don’t have to know just yet. Take all the time you need to figure out what you’re feeling and what you want to do about it, and then when you’re ready, go talk to Tim. It will hurt, but so does everything in this life. And you two have never let that stop you before.”

Jonny took a deep, slightly shaky breath, then nodded. “Yeah. Thanks, Drumbot.”

“Of course.” Brian rose to his feet, walked over to the first mate, bent down and kissed his forehead, then slipped out of the room to give him a moment, closing the door gently behind him.

Tim was waiting outside when he came into the corridor, Ashes keeping him pinned with a wary glare. He had his arms wrapped tightly around himself, and wouldn’t meet Brian’s eyes. “Is he going to apologize?”

“Are you?” Brian asked. Not an accusation, just curious. Tim sighed, sounding just as shattered as Jonny had. “I don’t know. I want to. But I don’t know how to, when-”

“You meant most of what you said and so did he,” Brian finished for him. Tim winced. “Yeah.”

Brian placed a gentle hand on the gunner’s shoulder. “Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve done all I can do here. The rest is up to you two.”

Tim nodded stiffly. Brian gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before letting go and heading off down the corridor, leaving the pair to work themselves out. 

“You look like you could use a drink,” Ashes commented, catching up to Brian and slinging an arm around his shoulders. 

“I don’t drink,” he reminded them. 

“Whatever the closest thing to drinking you do then. You deserve it, after that.”

Brian considered, then said, “I think I want to hit something and then lie down face first on the floor for a couple hours. Maybe scream a bit.”

Ashes chuckled. “Sounds perfect. Count me in.”

And off they went, while a gunner entered an empty sewing room to find nothing but a torn up scrap of gray-green cloth that perfectly matched the eyes of someone he’d once known; while a first mate, exhausted and aching, went to sleep in a room that wasn’t his, in a bed that smelled of gunpowder and war but that he knew as well as the ticking of his heart; while a former inspector curled up in a violinist’s arms and promptly declared that ‘love is stupid’; while an engineer ran her fingers lovingly over a ship’s walls, remembering a time she had considered leaving forever and endlessly glad that she hadn’t; while an archivist and a scientist bickered over what did or did not make something sentient; while a wooden soldier found another lost kitten crawling through the vents and promised that it a home full of food and friends; while so many lived and loved and hurt and broke and put themselves back together again and lived to fight another day. 

Because the universe is infinite and full of idiots, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. 


	2. An Observer's Point of View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation outside of an airlock.

The airlock wouldn’t open. Tim shoved at the door, slamming the controls with everything he had, but the damn thing refused to budge. 

“Aurora,” he hissed, aiming a vicious kick at the door, knowing she would feel it. “Aurora, open the goddamn airlock.”

The response he received was, plainly and simply,  _ no.  _

_ “Aurora,”  _ Tim kicked the door again, harder this time. It still didn’t open. Furious, he whipped out his pistol and fired one, two, three shots at the controls. They sparked and flickered, but the door still. Didn’t. Open. 

“Why the  _ fuck  _ won’t you open this fucking door?” he screamed, firing at it again for good measure. Aurora projected her response across its unyielding surface:  _ Because you’re being rude.  _

Tim got the distinct impression that she was sticking her tongue out at him, and he screamed again, launching himself at the airlock door in a frenzy, kicking and shoving and digging his nails in between the door and the wall, pulling so hard that a couple snapped off. Neither the pain or the blood fazed him, however, and his next attempt involved him slamming his head against the sheet of metal with all the force he could muster. 

Stumbling backwards, Tim shook his head, trying to clear it so he could try again, but he ended up tripping over nothing in particular and landing flat on his back, groaning in frustration and pain. 

His head ached, there was blood trickling from his forehead and his fingernails, his eyes burned from overheating when he had been trying to force them to cry as well as tore at his flesh from banging into the door and knocking them slightly out of place. But  _ none  _ of that,  _ none of it,  _ hurt as bad as the image of Jonny’s face after Tim had said those words. He couldn’t stop seeing it, hearing his own voice snarl  _ “heartless bastard”  _ and watching the first mate break in the aftermath. All the fight had gone out of Jonny in an instant, and he had just… shut down. He had made this noise, this little whimpering gasp, and then just started  _ trembling,  _ so badly that he had barely been able to scream at Tim to get out. And the worst part was: Tim had enjoyed it. He had relished in that power, that ability to tear Jonny apart so thoroughly and easily. And that hurt more than anything. 

Instead of thinking about it, Tim was determined to get back on his feet and open that airlock, but when he tried to sit up, he found a hand pressed to his chest and shoving him right back down. “Nope.”

Tim blinked, his damaged eyes taking a moment to focus on Lyf, crouching over him. He hadn’t even noticed they were there. “Let me up.”

“Absolutely not.”

Tim scrabbled for his guns, determined to shoot them if he had to. “Where the fuck are my guns??”

Lyf patted their belt with a smirk. “My guns now.”

“You fucking-” Tim struggled to sit up, and was promptly forced down again.  _ “Let me go.” _

“And precisely what will you do if I do?”

Tim scowled at them. “What do you  _ think?” _

“I  _ think  _ that there is absolutely no way I am letting you toss yourself out of an airlock, so you’re going to have to choose another option, my friend.”

Tim snarled and shoved Lyf backwards, forcing his way to his feet, charging blindly at the airlock once more. Lyf recovered quickly and caught him around the waist, dragging him back. Tim kicked and screamed and pushed at them, but they wouldn’t budge, and suddenly he didn’t have the strength to fight anymore and slumped against them like a dead weight. Lyf slid with him to the floor and shifted their arms so they were hugging him, one hand coming up to cradle the back of his head as he repeatedly banged his head into their shoulder, fucking up his eyes even further but that didn’t  _ matter  _ if he could just make it hurt enough he could stop thinking about Jonny’s fucking  _ face  _ and- 

“Tim, hey- hey, don’t. Stop it. Tim,  _ stop.”  _ Lyf forced him back, trapping his face in the frame of their hands so he couldn’t move it. 

“I need to  _ fix it,”  _ Tim insisted, twisting back and forth, trying to escape. “If you’d just let me  _ go-  _ If I just  _ left-  _ I can  _ fix it  _ and I can fix it  _ all  _ and he wouldn’t hurt anymore and  _ I  _ wouldn’t hurt anymore and I can  _ fix it-” _

“No, goddamnit, you  _ can’t,”  _ Lyf sighed, pulling him back to meet their eyes. “Not like that.”

“Freezing to death in space over and over again for the rest of eternity is better than staying here with  _ him,”  _ Tim whispered, defeated, tearing himself away from Lyf and curling into a tight ball on floor.  _ And what I did to him,  _ he added in his mind, but couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. 

“And why do you care, anyway?” Tim snapped at Lyf before he could stop himself, apparently determined to cause as much damage as possible. “You don’t know me. You’re not even part of this crew.”

He expected them to leave, or to at least snap back, but they didn’t say a word, just scooted around until they were seated facing him (or, well, facing him as well as you can face someone when they’re curled on the floor in the fetal position). They remained like that, utterly silent, until Tim couldn’t take it anymore. He lifted his head to glare at them, his eyesight fading in and out of focus. “What, not even gonna argue with me?”

Lyf shrugged. “You haven’t yet said anything I don’t tell myself every day.”

That shut Tim up. He looked away from them, shutting his eyes as their current inability to focus was giving him a headache and making him dizzy. Or maybe that was the fact that he had recently slammed his head forcefully into a metal door. 

“You know, I used to spend every minute wanting to die,” Lyf said quietly after a moment. “Still do, sometimes. But it was worst in the first decade or so after the Bifrost. I didn’t think I  _ deserved  _ to live, I couldn’t understand why I was still alive when my entire system wasn’t. It felt like I had been singled out for something, and I couldn’t bear that. I didn’t  _ matter.  _ But then I ran into this disaster of a crew, and I realized something. If I was going to exist, after everything, I might as well make the most of it. I might as well make the most of it. I might as well live for everyone who died, live all the lives they never got to. Otherwise what’s the point of me being basically immortal?”

“What’s your point?” Tim grumbled. Lyf didn’t answer, just asked “What happened to your eyes? The fingernail marks, I mean.”

Tim brushed his fingertips across the small gashes across his brow, already mostly healed. He had completely forgotten about that. “Jonny,” he explained, the memory flashing through his mind.  _ Here, let me help- don’t TOUCH me- _

Tim flinched, but Lyf deserved more of an explanation than that, so he pushed through it. “He… tried to dig them out for me, thought it would help me somehow. He thinks everything can be made better by cutting out the bit that hurts, but it  _ can’t  _ and I told him so.”

Lyf coughed something that sounded suspiciously like ‘hypocrite’, and quickly made an attempt to cover it up when Tim snapped his eyes open and glared at them. “What was that?”

Lyf shook their head. “Nothing. It’s just… what the hell do you think you were just trying to do? Throwing yourself into the void like that? That’s  _ exactly…  _ how did you put it? ‘Cutting out the bit that hurts’? That’s what you’re doing here, Tim.”

Tim blinked. Shit. That  _ was  _ what he’d been trying to do. But it was just… so easy. All he had to do was get that airlock open, and he would be far away from it all… 

“Shit,” he flopped onto his back, staring forlornly at the ceiling. “I’m a fucking idiot. I’m sorry, Lyffy.”

“Never call me that again and you’re good,” Lyf reassured him. He attempted a weak grin in their direction. “Lyfsy? Lyf-Lyf? Lyffers?”

Lyf shook their head emphatically. “No, no, and absolutely not. Please just stick to Lyf, Tim.” 

“Marius calls you Lyffers,” Tim pointed out.

“That’s irrelevant.”

“It’s cute.”

“Also irrelevant. You’re stalling.”

“Guilty,” Tim sighed. “I don’t- I don’t really know what you want me to say here. I fucked up. Jonny fucked up. We fucked each other up, and we’re going to keep fucking each other up. That’s how we’ve always been. He knows that, I know that. And we meant everything we said.”

_ Almost everything.  _ Tim hadn’t mean it when he called Jonny a heartless bastard, he  _ really  _ hadn’t. Everything else… yeah, he’d meant everything else. 

“So what are you going to do about it?”

_ “Is  _ there anything I can do about it? Wouldn’t it just be so much easier if we weren’t- if we didn’t- if I didn’t-”  _ If I didn’t love him so goddamn much.  _

Lyf studied him silently for a moment, their icy blue eyes thoughtful. “Do you know the best part of being on the outside?” they asked finally. “About being somewhere between a part of the crew and just adjacent to it?”

“I get the feeling this is a rhetorical question.”

Lyf reached out and tapped a finger to Tim’s nose. “It is. Now hush.” 

Tim hushed. Lyf cleared their throat and continued. “The best part of being on the outside is that you get to observe. You watch people interact, see how they react to each other, notice things they do and ways they act that they might not be aware of. And you know what I’ve noticed about this crew?”

Tim opened his mouth to ask if that was another rhetorical question, but Lyf pushed on before he could. 

“You’re all missing some part of yourselves, yes? That’s kind of your whole thing. You’re all missing something, or multiple things, and it causes you each so much trauma and pain in so many different ways. But what none of you seem to realize is that you’re  _ not.  _ You’re not missing anything, not when you’re all together. You fulfill the missing pieces of each other. It’s like… you’re all the limbs of one larger organism. No, not limbs. That’s not quite it. Vital organs, maybe? I don’t know, but you need all of you to function properly, and none of you are whole without the other pieces around. Does that make any kind of sense?”

Tim thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the more it did. “I think so.”

_ It makes perfect sense to me,  _ Aurora chimed in.  _ I, too, have noticed this.  _

Lyf nodded, wiggling their hands around as they spoke. “For example: Jonny. I know, I know, you don’t want to think about him right now, but hear me out. When he’s left alone with his heart, he starts spiraling, right? That’s because you  _ are  _ his heart. All of you. That mechanical thing in his chest may be what makes his body immortal, but  _ you  _ are what keep him alive, what keep him fighting and getting back up again at the end of the day. When you take even a small part of that away… Well. You know better than I do, I suppose.”

Something in Tim’s heart gave a violent twist as he thought about Jonny alone. Would he just give up? If he had no one to come back to when he died, would he just… not? Tim would give up on his own, he thought. He’d never been very good without someone to fight for. 

_ “Fuck,”  _ he sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I need to- I need to go talk to him. I don’t think I can apologize, not until he does, but- I need to talk to him.” 

“Yeah, go,” Lyf stood up and helped Tim to his feet. “I’m glad you’re not dying in the void of space, by the way.”

“Me too,” Tim admitted, then leaned over and kissed the former inspector’s cheek lightly. “Thanks, Lyf. You’re good people.”

“Not sure I  _ am  _ people, anymore,” Lyf mused, tilting their head in consideration. “But I appreciate it.”

“And for what it’s worth,” Tim added over his shoulder as he headed down the corridor. “I think you’re at  _ least  _ a limb.”

Marius was waiting on the bridge when Lyf entered, sitting at the card table and humming to himself quietly. The sight of him drained all the tension that came from wrestling an angry Tim away from the airlock from their body, and they crossed over to him and deposited themself firmly in his lap. 

“Hi,” he said, giving their temple a kiss. Lyf threaded their arms around his neck and hid their face in his shoulder. “Love is stupid,” they grumbled. 

“Thanks,” Marius said drily. Lyf huffed. “I didn’t say  _ you’re  _ stupid, I said  _ love  _ is.”

“Well, I can easily convince you otherwise.”

Lyf looked up at him and raised an eyebrow, then groaned as he held up a violin which had decidedly  _ not  _ been there before. “Please no. Not right now. I want to be  _ held,  _ not violined at.”

Marius pouted, but happily obliged. After a comfortable minute, Lyf asked “Hey, Mare?”

“Angel?”

“Where do the violins come from? You’ve never told me.”

Marius schooled his face into a suspiciously solemn expression. “Well, you see, when a mommy violin and a daddy violin love each other  _ very much-” _

Lyf hit him. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“... No, I don’t.”

When Tim got back to the sewing room door, Ashes was waiting outside. As he approached they held a hand out to stop him. “Ohhh no you don’t.”

“Is someone in there with him?” Tim asked, stopping a respectable distance away from the door.

“Brian,” Ashes replied, and Tim nodded stiffly. “Good. That’s good.”

The two of them waited in awkward silence until Brian stepped out and told him that he’d done all he could and the rest was up to Tim and Jonny. Then Brian and Ashes left to… go lie facedown on the floor and scream? And Tim was left hovering outside his sewing room, debating whether or not to go in, and what he would say if he did. 

Before he could make his move, the door opened and Jonny stepped out. He looked like he’d been crying for days, and Tim’s anger flared up again at the sight.  _ Yeah, have a good cry, why don’t you. At least you’re able to. _

Jonny froze when he saw Tim standing there, and his hands balled into fists at his sides. He looked like he was trying his best to keep from trembling. Without a word, he whirled around and practically sprinted down the corridor, leaving Tim standing alone once more. 

With nothing better to do, Tim went into the sewing room. Sewing always calmed him down, and he needed something to do with hands that wasn’t harmful to him or anyone else. He looked around for something, anything, any unfinished project or scrap of inspiration, and landed on a few scattered pieces of fabric in the corner. 

Tim knelt beside them and picked one up, threading it through his fingers. There was something so familiar about it, about the faded gray-green color, so much like…

Tim almost fell backwards as he was hit with flashes of memory, of eyes that shade, eyes he had known so well, eyes he had forgotten.  _ Bertie.  _

Tim was on his feet in a second, tearing through the room, every drawer and corner, desperate. There  _ had  _ to be more of it somewhere, there  _ had  _ to. He let out a cry of pain and relief as he uncovered a full length of the fabric, big enough to wrap around himself as a blanket, which is what he did with it.

If Tim could cry, he would have been a blubbering mess on the floor, but he couldn’t, so he settled for pressing his face into the fabric and shaking like a leaf in the wind, murmuring  _ I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry  _ over and over again until the words lost all meaning and he could do nothing but drift off to sleep in the arms of a memory. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i put the violinspector bit in purely so i could make that joke about where violins come from. you're welcome.
> 
> there will be a third chapter!! it will be a mess because i have so many feelings and conflicting ideas about where i want it to go, but it will exist!!


End file.
